This is the second installment of our four-part series about the Roasted Marshmallow Newspaper that was started by Civics 10 students from the Civic Mirror Country “Trixtown” at Turner Fenton Secondary School in Brampton, Ontario.
Varunism – What Does This Mean?
Written By Anjan
Everything seems to be falling in place for our great Prime Minister. Coincidence? I think not. There is definitely something fishy in this pond of politics, and I think it is about time the public opened its eyes. Numerous events took place at the House of Commons assembly, many of which may have shown the Prime Minister’s true intentions.
Primarily, Varun Puri seems to have sweet talked the opposition into electing Isha Mistry as the House of Common’s Speaker. The opposition said that it doesn’t matter since Varun has promised to listen to them as well, but… who are we kidding – this is politics.
“I think it’s a big loss for the opposition,” says an anonymous citizen.
Turns out, she was right. When electing the judge of Trixtown, many faces turned as the PM nominated his choice. It was evident that the opposition disagreed with this choice, but they were unsuccessful in stopping it due to their minority. After all, the opposition only holds one third of the seats.
“Personally, I think that James is not as impartial,” says opposition MP Raghav, “I would have chosen someone else.”
Try as they might, the opposition is no longer able to affect the PM. He may choose to listen to them or choose not to. For example, there was apparently a dispute about income tax.
“We would have liked a lower income tax,” states Raghav. But since his impact of parliament decisions has now been limited, he simply shrugged and said, “Oh well.” To me this means defeat, and an indication that Varun has grown stronger. It may even look like an unknown master plan where “part one” is complete.
The other parts of this master plan were unravelled during the remaining time in the House of Commons assembly. The government introduced and passed numerous other laws; however, to me they looked like total control. For example, it does not take long to understand that the taxes taken from rich people (a.k.a. the hardworking people), will not be returned to them. While interviewing a citizen from another country called “Yop! Mama”, I discovered a very interesting detail. “Your income tax is absurd!” stated this anonymous student, “Our income tax is only three percent, seventeen percent less than yours.” “We are being ripped off! The government is only providing to people who don’t work hard,” says this second anonymous citizen, “This will only make those lazy people lazier.”
During the House of Commons, Varun was also asked about his choice of the nationalized hexes. It was understandable to nationalize the energy hex, but there seemed to be a controversy regarding the insurance hex. “We want to balance the protection against wildcards between the government and the public,” stated the PM, “so we took the insurance hex under our wing and allowed the public to take the security hex.” However, Varun failed to explain that since the government will also own the health hex, they will control most of the wildcard protection business.
Similarly, Varun also failed to mention that he was going to control the farms. “Each person is permitted to purchase and receive one food unit, if not followed, they will be subjected to illegal actions,” says the newly passed bill 202. The people who clearly understood what his bill meant ended up shocked. “The government is basically buying the farms,” says Himashi, a fellow citizen, “If they control the actions of the farmers, it is equivalent to controlling the farms.”Looks like the farmers no longer have any freedom. They are told whom to sell to and how much to sell it for. Even their freedom of deciding how much of their own food they can consume is taken away. They are forced to sell all their food.
The only thing the government can’t get from the farms is the income, but they don’t need it after all. Look around – in civics mirror, only certain hexes are able to produce a steady income. The government has either nationalized or restricted most of them. Moreover, they have suspended the construction of any more hexes. This results in citizen dependency on the government. Most citizens will not be able to provide for themselves and will become dependent on the government for the rest of the game. Welfare will be the only source of survival for many.
However, it seems that Varun has also out grown his party. In the hall ways, Government MP Mehreen was asked a question about a bill. She replied by saying, “Just ask Varun… I actually don’t know much since he keeps changing everything.”
So much power and control in the hands of one person, doesn’t this remind you of someone. After all, we have all studied history, certain faces must come to mind. So, the next time you see Varun making a decision for the betterment of our country, remember those images in your head. After all, no one is happy with all for this Varunism going around.
The Roasted Marshmellow’s next article covering Trixtown’s political situation will be published on the CM Trenches Blog on Monday, April 25th, 2011.
